Disturb everyone else with your noise, but protect yourself

The idea of protecting your own hearing, while bothering and deafening others with your motorcycle’s noise, is ironic.

Riding a motorcycle is a dangerous pastime, and many riders believe that a louder motorcycle is a safer one because drivers of other vehicles can hear them. Most experts, however, think that’s really not true and posit that many riders just like to make as much noise as possible to show how profoundly anti-social they are.

What they–and most police departments–don’t know is that there are state and federal laws regulating motorcycle exhaust noise, and the best way to avoid noise-induced hearing loss is to reduce the noise level at its source.

So rather than offering advice on protecting hearing to those who would impose their noise on the rest of us, Motorcycle.com, why not tell your readers to respect others by removing the illegal straight-pipe exhaust systems they put on their bikes?